May 16, 2006
Incompetence Of The Hands
Incompetence can take on as many forms and flavors as competence. Still, surely one of the hallmark characteristics of utter incompetence occurs when, as the saying goes, 'the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing." This metaphor conveys a basic failure of coordination -- whether in vision or policy/strategy or, especially, implementation. The lack of coordination between the two hands of the same body result in those hands pointing toward only one thing: confusion.
Last night, we learned from the incompetent, uncoordinated and confused elected officials of our nation about plans to deploy up to 6,000 members of an already overstretched national gaurd along the border to assist the border patrol whose numbers the same administration cut significantly a year ago because of budget pressures resulting from the Iraq adventure being waged, in major part, by a national gaurd who were unprepared and underfunded for the duration of that conflict but whose stretched numbers were needed because the same administration couldn't find in the regular armed forces the number of soldiers required because they believe actually in cutting the number of on the ground armed personnnel in favor of quick strike technology and strategy to win conflicts that they define in terms of battles won instead of enduring peace achieved so that the full cost of the initiative is never actually accounted for, thereby yielding unsupportable budget deficits that can only be met by cutting things like the border patrol so that those other needed services fail to deliver when needed and create squeeky wheels that can then be greased by temporary measures such as moving in the national gaurd to do back office and other clerical/admiinstrative support work during the two weeks each year the guard are supposed to be training in things like, say, armed conflict that they might be called on to deliver if ever deployed in a war situation -- but only for so long as it takes for the administration to build up the border partrol to the numbers that were rejected a year ago.
So many right hands. So many left hands. So little knowledge or awareness by the ones of what the others are up to.